Carousel Of The Dead
by goddessa39
Summary: Shikako Nara wakes up in yet another life that goes downhill, and Rick Grimes wakes up to his normal world changed. Starring: Tabitha Meadows, Rick Grimes, Morgan and his son Duane.


Hey all! I'm one of those people that will write a beginning to every idea, and then it will just be abandoned after I get into something else, hence why I haven't posted anything new in over two years. But since someone brought up the Walking Dead on this forum, I figured I'd shove this out there since it was sitting in a file probably molding for a long time now. I had it titled "Carousel Times In The Dead Lands," but of course, I have no memory of why I was calling it that.

The basic background plan was that Shikako, now Tabitha, was born to an abusive parent, sneakily having killed him. Then she was adopted by a much better 'Pops.' However, Rick liked the girl and almost had her introduced to his household. She looks very different now and is going by a chosen name so he doesn't recognize her. So now she's surviving pretty decently in a zombie world, but as a young girl, she is sticking around this other kid and his father as the first few really bad weeks pass. And while Shikako might be able to survive with her knowledge, it is not only her in this world.

 _3/19/19: I reposted this fic because it suddenly was only showing up with all of the html format._

-XOXOX-

 **Dreaming Of Sunshine (Naruto)/The Walking Dead. AU**

Shikako Nara wakes up in yet another life that goes downhill, and Rick Grimes wakes up to his normal world changed. Starring: Tabitha Meadows, Rick Grimes, Morgan and his son Duane. The basic plan had it co-starring Lori and Carl and some Rick/Shane/Lori.

-XOXOX-

His vision is smoky and colorless. Somehow, he knows its drugs. Hospital prescribed and necessary, but his mind is still muddy and mixed up in that netherworld of dreams and lost time. For what last a moment, to minutes, to a long span of dreams, he can see Shane, nervous, scared and sturdy Shane as he introduces some flowers in a blue vase. It isn't a dollar store vase bought at a nearby dime store or something rummaged up in the hospital gift shop two floors down. There's no proof but the wavy surface of the time that passes in dreams and the knowledge the appears solid and true when the mind hallucinates. He thinks his wife and son are flittering around the corners of lost moments, spun through the liminal space of the dreaming. But mostly it's Shane; placing a vase of flowers, sitting on a chair to chatter for a moment to meet eyes, fluffing his pillow to change his position.

He looks at the flowers, illuminated by the light from the window. Tulips, lavender and real green things. Not picked up off the side of the road where his blood lies. But pretty all the same. It's things a female would notice. For a moment, he almost thinks his wife picked them out.

Linda and Diane from dispatch. Nice ladies, always waving when he tips his hat in greeting. Normal ladies but not his ladies. The world wavers again, like life in front of a gas main, and he blinks.

He remembers that old spoon collection Shane nicked years back, the blue of the delicate ribbons keeping the spoons and forks separate. It just reminds him and he laughs even as he chokes on it. His throat is so dry.

But he blinks and Shane isn't there to laugh at his sudden clumsiness or help him from the delirium. Wasn't his friend just there? He blinks again and tries to brush away the sweat over his eyes. Something isn't right. Is his mind slipping away or does he even want to know?

The flowers are on the side table and he glances at it. Vision wavering like looking through propane, Rick expects to see the pinks and violet colored flowers but they are all drooped and dried out like cornstarch. He reaches out with one unsteady hand and touches at some petals, accidentally smashes it together. It falls to the end table with other dead petals around the vase and it reminds him of clay and bones, the way things dry out in the desert.

Something is wrong. He looks up at the clock and its 2:15.

Rick Grimes is stiff and heavy as if he had been wading through rapids. Despite the fact that he knows there was no water holding him down, he has to get up. He has to find Shane. Something. When he falls to the floor he curls up and whimpers for a moment, calls for help in a dull voice that doesn't reach the walls. His legs fold like deerling limbs of a newborn three times until he learns to prop himself up using the heavy bed as an anchor. Slowly, he gets back up and stumbles to the bathroom. He drinks from the sink slowly, gorging himself on water without tasting it. The cloudiness of the water must just be from his vision not being up to its typical work. He fills up the two plastic cubs on his side table and tops up the pitcher.

He's being quiet now. Nobody has come to help him. Isn't this a hospital? And yet, he has woken up to nobody.

The door opens to a noiseless place. Are his ears working? He walks sideways, always half leaned against the wall, his feet almost horizontal to his path more out of his lack of strength than because he's expecting to have to move quickly, but his spine pings him a warning. No people, lights off. The place is a mess. He finds a pack of dime store matches on some loose detritus on the nursing station. He thinks about calling for a nurse, but his mouth does not want to work.

Abandoned, he thinks. Why was a hospital in use abandoned? Images of war or looting run through his mind and he tries to be quiet. The hairs on his neck have been metaphorically standing up straight since he woke up so his judgement might be lacking but his survival instincts are in control. He is being quiet in a hospital and no one is around to help him. His neck itches.

The nursing station is as dark and empty as the hallways. He forages a pack of cigarettes and a handful of matches. He lights one, puts out the match in a planter and waves the cigarette around. He cannot smell the smoke and the edge of the burning cigarette should be warm, but his skin has not adjusted.

The bit of coal lights up a small space but only highlights the aloneness. Swinging doors on his right are electrically lit with some light from down another hall and he can't help but look. There is a body on the hallway. A woman's body and she's torn open, wrecked. What war has come so far in to American soil? How could anyone leave her there? Hell, how could anyone leave him here? Her eyes are grey and sunken and he walks away before he gets near it. Is he in a nightmare? Then why did he almost expect those eyes to open as his did?

He limps away, not wanting to look anymore, but there's other horrors that get to him. Loose wiring hanging from the ceiling and lights that flicker if they're not off entirely. His body shivers, contracts. He should be resting still but... maybe this is just a nightmare. Rick passes a blood stain congealed against the side of the hallway and against a wall. The part of him prepared mentally for the Bureau job he'd never left for sees how there is no one to clean it up and there is no stain from someone being rushed away and he's disturbed so he looks away.

There is a door when he turned left as well, this one a full, heavy duty door with a thick chain holding it closed by the handles. Four words painted on the doors in pitch black spray paint stare back and he's just confused. DON'T DEAD OPEN INSIDE. What? He tilts his head to think about it. Oh. Don't Open is on the left door and Dead Inside is on the right. It makes more sense, literacy wise but the meaning of the words in that form do not really equate to anything.

He can feel a banging vibration from somewhere but decides without truly processing anything that it's just his blood lumpily flowing through his veins after so long in bed, like when you cross your ankles for too long but they just go numb and instead of that pins-and-needles feeling, it's just the way you can almost trace the lines to your blood tunnels being used once again.

Then, he thinks he can hear moaning, and the distant sound of glass breaking. The door moves as if something is attempting to open it. But it's weird, wrong somehow, the way the doors hurry forward and hold tight against the plank of grey, colorless wood and stay there thanks to bolts configured against the entryway. No one ran, jumped or tackled the door. It's just held heavy; the way Lori's belly bulge had seemed unnatural after Carl was conceived. Rick Grimes has quit thinking, just tries to keep his shaking body from collapsing downwards on the dirty, dusty, disheveled floor as he feels something of a threat in front of him.

He hasn't been awake an hour. Maybe he's still dreaming.

A hand reaches through the hole in the door. It's somehow without important colors he knows of skin, a healthy pink, a dangerous red or the lifeline white when blood has left too quick where instinct demands help. This is just grey, like the life leached out and the nails he notices once cared for are broken and stitched down the middle. The nail bed almost looks elongated, but no. People often remark upon how, when someone dies, the hair and nail beds continue to grow. It is not actually true but at least it's an understandable myth. What actually happens as blood and strength drain away to leave the decorated meat sack is that fleshy, plump skin falls against the bones and the fluids drain away leaving the follicles to collapse showing the finer roots of the hair or nails.

He slowly backs away from the door as two hands reach out towards him. Moans like ghost sounds touch against his skin. The metaphorical prickling leaves him somehow aware and reacting to his body's desire to survive, even as his mind has no ability to keep up.

And then Rick is moving, moving past grimy hallways and bloods stains that look as if someone clawed up the pale paint job. He hurries past swinging doors that bang heavily against his skin, a distant, disturbing echo, even if the noise down the hall barely registers on his hearing. He tries the elevator but what little logic is whittling in his shaken brain reminds him that with the power not looking so steady, getting stuck in an elevator is not a choice ideal.

The emergency stairs are a bit of luck even if by most standards they are right where they should be, near the elevators. A flat sign that says IN CASE OF FIRE USE STAIRS remains unnoticed save the juicy red color in the word FIRE as he passes it. The door closes and Rick is stuck in the dark. He tries for a match but drops it in the dark. The second one lights though and he makes his way down. The back door of the hospital bangs open and light and sound and sense hit him like a train wreck. His senses are beginning to come back to him with the flood of adrenaline. His feet feel the cold and harshness of the stairs. And when he gets to the bottom, the smack of his general area hits him. There are things he should know, should think, should do but all there is right now is the horror of it.

Sheets once white have turned yellow and in them laid in lines then in chaotic clumps are bodies. He can't really see them yet, or the bullet hole in the forehead of each one, but he knows those pillowed shapes are bodies. An ambulance and a few heavy-duty trucks lay quiet with stacks of them in the back. He walks a path by the heads, noticing loose hair.

Rick pinches himself. Wake up, he thinks, wake up. Because this cannot be real.

And old electric ENTRANCE sign over the truck exit is broken and discarded. It makes him look up. The walls are spotted with dirt and spoiled with grime, messed up in a way of third world, war-torn countries. It occurs to him that he does not know where he is. He passes by the exit and hunches at the feel of grass. It's soft and damp and it knocks him from his walk consisting of locked knees and harsh, shocked breathing. He falls for moment, touching the grass to his hands and only vaguely noticing the leaves on the ground. A yard man hired by the hospital should have been called in to clean them up.

Another body on the lawn catches his attention. But he only glances at the thing, knowing it is not alive. And then he is climbing the small hill by instinct because what he sees must be false-must be-but he must see it anyway. Lines in the sky, crooked but there. It's a helicopter. He crawls without shame, holding himself up and clutching at his left side.

At the top he stands to get a look. Behind the helicopter is an armada. Tan Humvees, green hummers, a few other helicopters. A large green tent and other buildings decimated. A few body bags and gun casings lay there, abandoned as everything else. He begins to walk on the side of it, hearing birds chirping, bugs chittering, and the sudden absence of flies.

Wheels in the air catch his attention, and they're attached to a red bicycle. His eyes travel only for a second to the meat sack on the lawn, its head and torso connected to only the grass by frondy eschew. And then it moves. From stillness it moves, turns over and opens gusty pale, sightless eyes, hissing in the way of snakes and nightmares.

He falls again, cussing and breathing in. It growls, reaches, and the yellowed things yawns at him. He can see the green stain from being on the grass for a time. Its teeth are large and showcasing of the lack of lips. The part in the hair somehow makes it more horrible. it reaches like the thing in the hospital as if asking for help, but the edges of the fingers grip and he knows in a primal way when logic fails that no, this thing cannot be helped. Fleeing, Rick sits on the bike and lets his skill at bike riding keep him from toppling even as he shakes. It's just a few feet away before it occurs to him that he does know where he is.

Two blocks over and he's home, discarding the bike in the street. The house he bought after marrying Lori stands. He'd carried her over the hallway when he brought her the first time, made love to her in it numerous times, watched his son come into the world in that house. The door is still open. He runs in.

His voice is hurt and dry. If they were inside the building, in this nightmare, it is doubtful they would have had the capacity to even hear his weak calls. But he tries anyway. "Lori! Lori!" The bedroom is a mess of half packed clothes and loose hangers. "Carl! Carl!" But no one answers. He falls to the hardwood floor in something between a fall and a flail, and cries, mentally screams their names. it occurs to him when he looks up at the ticking clock, one of those cheap battery powered ones that could last a year without ever having been plugged in to a socket, that time passes strangely in dreams.

He hasn't been awake for an hour now. 3:03 pm.

-XOXOX-

He wakes on a plushy bed, old yellow sheets that are more classic old then stained by time and dirt. Turning his head, he can see a long painting on the wall of sunflowers. It's pretty if you're into farms and things.

There's a girl sitting on a rocking chair. She moves slowly with her knees tucked up. In his head he can hear the sounds but its silent in the room save the hum of a propane lamp. She's reading a heavy book. She has dark hair like chocolate held in an intricate braid down the back of her head that wraps over her shoulder to hang low. The fingers of her right-hand plays with the hairs. Her left hand is wrapped in a blanket and supporting a book. For a long time, he just stairs. Eventually she looks up.

"You don't remember me, do you?" She asks with a half-smile, not happy but more welcoming then anything. He shakes his head a little, tilting into the puff of the pillow.

"I read your chart," she says in a whisper.

And yeah, he should know what that means. But he doesn't really. The girl reaches over to the side table and pulls out a clipboard atop a thick, plastic case. The hospital logo is etched on the back. "You assumed a severe gunshot wound to your left side below the Serratus anterior muscle grouping. According to your timelines the bullet moved down so they had to force you into a coma. While you healed well enough, you never woke significantly from the coma, but you talk in your sleep so it was apparent you weren't brain dead." She flips a few pages, reads of some of the medications he was on, what he was weaned off of and what he was experiencing.

Rick could only stare, blinking slowly. "You read my chart?"

She slips a brightly orange scrunchie into the pages as a bookmark, closes it and then puts her book and the hospital pages on the bed next to him. "You're remarkably able for a guy whose been in a coma for 45 days Mr. Grimes. I'm sorry to say you missed quite the excitement by just a few days."

"45 days?" His voice was a mere whisper and she passed him a glass of water. It had been boiled so it was tasteless but he drank it anyway. Eventually she stood with her book and turned the lamp down to a small spark. Her shadow seemed impossibly large when she walked to the other side of the room; She took a knife from her pocket and cut the plastic tie that had half his left arm to the bed. It flopped and he frowned when he realized it was completely numb, how he hadn't even noticed the leverage of it. He rubbed at his arm and watched the girl leave the door wide open. He slept a little, on and off for a time as if fleetingly remembering moments from his coma.

Eventually, she comes in again to turn the lamp off when the moon begins its descent, like remnant of a memory, wisps of flesh merely a ghost. He blinks again when the light is more certain and the rocking chair is gone now. A solid chair is resting then, looking out a window. There's a man with long jeans on and a plaid shirt he could have gotten at any store in the country. He has dark skin and a three-day shadow of fur on his chin. He's flinching from the quiet the way Rick is.

"Tabitha says she found you passed out. Not a smart thing to do in these days." He looks at the window but sees nothing. "Imagine it must be a shock to wake up to this," he mentions vaguely into the day, "this, this other world." Then he turns and looks at Ricks face. The deputy can see the age that's crawled into his bones in short, a time. "Breakfast is downstairs. Come down when you're able."

"This place, It's Fred and Cindy Drake's."

"Never met them," Morgan says simply.

"I've been here. This is their place."

"It was empty when we got here."

Rick stands at a covered wall. He knows there are windows behind. He goes to look outside. "Don't do that. They'll see the light. There's more of them out there than usual. Tabitha apparently made some noise yesterday." He shakes his head but doesn't seem to disapprove of whatever that girl had done.

"I saw another person yesterday, a woman."

"Another person? Where?"

"At the hospital, she tried to come towards me."

"Ah. Wasn't a woman anymore." Rick looked confused, still shaky as was expected. "Come on," he stood and motioned over. "Eat, and then you need to see this straight off." He brought a can of soup. Chicken noodle. "I'm still not sure how that girl heats this up, but it works." They sat at a small dining table with four chairs.

Duane was already set down with something blue in one cup and macaroni and cheese in a paper plate. "Where's Tabitha?"

Duane's father turned and shrugged. "She had to go out early for something." To Rick, Morgan seemed strangely unconcerned. But he remembered the girl from earlier who must have been Tabitha. Strange was a good identifier really.

"Daddy, blessing," Duane said before Rick could reach for a spoon. The night-skinned family man took their hands; his son's right and on Rick's left. While all small towns mostly follow religion he had never felt very spiritual.

"Father, we thank thee for this food... Thy blessings... We ask you to watch over us in these crazy days and watch out for Tabitha when she's gone out. Amen."

"Amen," and then they dug in. Slowly, Rick tumbled into food as well.

Afterwards when the quiet eating was done, Morgan laid the paper plates into one trash can and the can into another. Duane looked up at Rick and his disheveled self. "Hey mister, is it true you don't know what is going on?"

"I," Rick nodded. "I woke up yesterday." He stuttered out, "in the hospital. Went home but..." He shook his head as if confused. "That's all I know."

"But you know about the dead people, right?"

"Yeah, I saw a lot of that. Out on the loading dock, hauling trucks."

"No," the boy said, quieter, "No the ones they put down. The one's they didn't. The walkers. The ones that are still around. They want to rip into people, eat you and take some flesh at least."

Rick remembers the person with colorless skin and flaked nails, remembers dead bodies more than just dead and the remnant of a person that hissed at him. "They're out there now, in the street?" He suddenly remembered how the other man hadn't wanted him to open a window and let the day in.

"Yeah. They're even more active after dark sometimes. Maybe it's the cool air or, Hell, maybe it's just that you were out. But we'll be fine as long as we stay quiet. Probably wander off by morning. Well, listen. One thing I do know... Don't you get bit! We saw your bandage and that's why we were afraid." Rick remembered his arm tied to the bed. "Bites kill you. The fever... burns you out. But then after a while... you come back."

"Seen it happen," the boy murmured.

After food, Morgan showed Rick to one of the bathrooms, the stagnate water held in the tub in plastic and the port a potty below a window. "We dump the bucket every day when the walkers aren't too active. And the water is distilled and good enough for a sponge to wipe you down some." He left Rick a towel and then let him at it. Rick looked at the wound in the large bathroom mirror. It was gross, mentally disgusting to have it part of him but as a cop he'd seen worse, and it was mostly healed. But he was weak. Afterwards he slept for a few hours more.

Morgan woke him for dinner and this time the girl was there. Her left arm was in a dark blue cast on the table next to a saw and a few other tools. Rick noticed how there wasn't any writing on it, but said nothing as they slowly took it off. The girl stretched her arms together. and winced at the new movement. Rick watched her and she looked at him.

"You still don't remember me?" He shook his head and she shrugged. "That's okay." Morgan began heating up dinner on a makeshift fire over the metal trashcan, using the old plates and detritus as kindling. The can of beans and hot water cooked slow as she began telling Rick her story. "Pops got hit a few hours after the town went crazy. The driver had a heart attack." She shrugged. "Things happen and you can't really blame anyone sometimes. He was okay in a bed when they fixed up my arm but... Was at the hospital when it happened. Saw a lot of things there. Anyway, a lot of people died and I didn't want to go to Atlanta with the others so I just got left behind in the rush."

"Why didn't you leave with the others?" Duane asked softly.

She could have said that she didn't want to leave her Pops. Rick expected that. He was not ready to hear her pragmatic answer. "All those confused rushes of people going to the same place in a panic?" She gave a tiny, bitter laugh that tried to sound funnier than it was. "Nah. I know better."

The beans heated and the boiling water was joined by rice. Tabitha got out the rice paper and heated some water to prepare it. Rick watched in confusion but eventually understood what she was doing. She was making the meal a little different, a little enjoyable. A half-eaten head of lettuce was wrapped in one of those Styrofoam buckets that somehow still had ice. The beans and rice went in the lettuce, she dropped some sort of sauce on that, then wrapped it tightly in rice paper.

It was a little plain and strange, but it was also the best thing he'd eaten in his memory.

After supper, Tabitha read a book while lounged on the couch. It was different than the one he'd seen her with before. He sat near her in the front room with a book on his lap, but his brain felt sad and fuzzy so while it laid open on a random page a short hand full in, he was not interested in reading it. The book was just to occupy him, maybe give his mind something to work with; instead it laid heavy on his lap the way a cat would, heavy and keeping him from getting up to do something he might regret. Across from them on a futon, Duane slept next to his father. Rick wondered why but then supposed if it was him and Carl alone in the world, they sleep next to each other too.

Morgan spoke up after a while. Tabitha heard but continued reading, or pretended to. "Carl. He your son? William, he said his name today." Rick idly thought about when he'd said his son's name but shrugged. Could have been any time. Could have been in his sleep. What did he even remember about these last few days?

"He's a little younger than your boy."

"And he's with his mother?"

"I hope so."

"Dad?" Duane asked sleepily.

"Yeah?"

"Did you ask him?" And Morgan gave an amused grin.

"Your gun shot... We got a little bet going. My boy says you're a... bank robber"

Rick gave a snort [and beside him Tabitha grinned into her braid] "Yeah. That's me. Deadly as a Dillinger. Kapow." He grins amused, then shakes his head. "Sheriff's deputy."

"Aha"

A car alarm down the street goes off and the three males startle. Duane stirs in a panic while Morgan tries to calm him down. "One of them must've just bumped a car."

"You sure?"

"Happened before. Went off a few minutes. Fet the light Duane."

The propane dimmed and then looked off from the far said of the lower couch. The look outside and several walkers are flitting about outside.

"it's not the blue one, down the street. Think this is a couple houses further over."

"That noise... will it bring more of them?"

"Nothing to do about it now. Just have to wait till morning."

The shadow figure with feminine curves presses against the curtains in front of the sitting room and a choked, broken sound makes its way out of Duane's throat. Morgan jumps and shoos him away from the window as the boy cries.

"She's here."

"Don't look boy, get away from the windows, I said go, come on!"

Rick slinks to the door, looks out the peephole. It's a black woman in a nightgown. Her eyes are still glassed over for all that they apparently see something. He blinks through the key hole and the woman-thing seems to look back. A hand on the other side grasps a door knob. Morgan mumbles to him about how she died, how he couldn't kill her.

Then Rick looks at his right and wonders how long Tabitha has been beside him. She's eerily silent as she listens and the deputy wonders what it is, she doesn't say.

END of One Shot

-XOXOX-

Yeah, folks, that's all I had written for the first part. It's been ABC checked a few times but of course it's pretty much impossible to check your own work. Apology for any annoying mistakes in the scribbling, but my thoughts are weird, and once I see them put down on the format, well, it's hard to think them in a different direction.

I never got into the Walking Dead canon because I abhor drama of any sort. But I had so many ideas for the basic plot. I watched the first episode on Netflix while writing this. Small changes that would evolve would start with Tabitha breaking up the car that made noise in the first episode so they would not be so swarmed in the night.

The first idea of this fic was for Tabitha to change little things until other things sorted themselves out. First Tabitha was going to get Duane and Morgan to agree to go with Rick. Not only would it kick up some common sense into very-early-Rick-in-a-zombie-world but it would give Shikako, now Tabitha, plenty of chances to show some bamfness and ninja-quiet. By the time Carl sees his dad for the first time, it is very apparent that our favorite shadow girl is not a normal little girl. Also her ability for hammer space is invaluable.

Lori/Shane? Yea, ha. No, this is an apocalyptic time when things are changing and people need people. Rick/Lori/Shane all the way. And when things get a little too dramatic when some of the survivors in the show thought little girls ought to do little girl things, she could retreat without being seen in the woods, bond with Daryl and his brother who understood a little better that the squeaky-clean view of things was not currently applicable. That would leave Carl and Duane to bond over befriending Tabitha and realizing the girl was very fey from what they were used to. (I also see Tabitha going a bit mute as she may be mentally much older but as she is only six or eight or whatever here, she is trying to be quiet and not get seen constantly. Sure, she could get away but if she's with other people? They couldn't.)

The other idea I had was Tabitha, Duane and Morgan to set up a small farm and community in one of those small 'self-sustaining and off the grid' cities in the us with solar and wind power, running water, etc. using the cargo containers as possible walls and underground shelters. In my head she's standing on the windmill with binoculars and using a drone with a radio to lead zombies of a broken overpass into a deep, deep hole and a trap.

Since I didn't get into the show, I never understood what Morgan was doing with some of the bad guys in the later seasons. The image in my head was of Negan, right before he kills Glenn for Rick and Morgan (having infiltrated the group for reasons I had not yet made up) to make eye contact and come up with a plan using the blinking eyes and finger movements that they quickly took down the opposing group as Tabitha sniped from the shadows. Then the survivors go with Tabitha to the new place.

...Anywho, feedback is appreciated. I will probably post it elsewhere since it is now out there, but I doubt I will ever get back to it so if there is anything worth stealing, feel free.


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